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Vecs in 300 AT |
Originally, robots were often developed for companionship and entertainment on Earth; with aging demographics beginning in the 21st century c.e., there were an increasing number of old people on the old planet, in varying states of health, all needing to be kept amused, and this is still the case in the late 23rd Century...
In space however, artificial worker systems for use in construction and mining are mostly controlled by a holistic information network, with little conscious intelligence used during most activities; this is similar to the organic systems within a cell or a multicellular organism, which use basic instructions coded into the DNA to build incredibly complex structures like trees and mammalian brains, with no conscious slavedriver instructing the various active agents.
So most neumanns and vecs at this time act unconsciously and efficiently at a limited range of activities.
In order to increase the flexibility of automatic mining robots a group of AI and superbrights led by Vanessa Dietrich encouraged the incorporation of self aware circuitry, stripped down from the vast self aware systems which have developed in the hyperturing entities; from Feynman Expert Systems and other superbright partial copies, down to character-bots based on famous actors and individuals living and dead, to a self-organising blank slate personality given the freedom to develop almost like a human being, robots were becoming more and more alive in the Interplanetary age.
Early researchers discovered that with a Vec you can get some surprising personalities emerging; and emulations of famous fictional robots of the past were popular; Kryten, Marvin, Robby, Daneel, Morag the Moravec from the Planet X epic anime saga of 2055, and many more...